Beef Pricewatch launched with detailed statistics on meat
As part of his beef roundtable initiative, Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney committed to launching the “Beef Pricewatch” online tool to make price information more accessible and free of charge to farmers.
Prepared by the Department’s Meat and Milk Policy Division, deadweight prices, liveweight prices, the number of cattle slaughtered, and live exports for the previous week are listed, along with a market summary for beef.
Last week’s figures for July 14-20 showed R3 carcases averaging €379.5/100kg for steers, €388.8 for heifers, and €336.1 for cows.
Excluding VAT, weanlings averaged €144.50 per 100kg; bull calves averaged €128.50 per head.
Beef slaughterings are broken down by category (36.5% steers, 26.6% cows, 24.6% heifers, 9.3% young bulls, and 2.9% mature bulls in the third week of July) per week for 2013 and 2014.
Live exports are given by destination (2,501 outside the EU, 717 to Northern Ireland, and 1,954 to the rest of the EU in the third week of July).
For the previous week, sheepmeat prices, slaughterings, and live exports are given, and pig prices and slaughterings are listed. Recent prices were 8.4% ahead of the 2013 level, according to the Department’s figures. The meat market reports contains cumulative poultry slaughterings for the year (running 2.8% behind 2013). Graphical comparisons with 2012 and 2013 are given for R3 steer prices, R3 heifer prices, and O4 cow prices. Other tables show weekly beef market deadweight prices since 2012 for steers, cows and heifers.
An EU live cattle market report compares prices for weanlings aged 6-12 months and bull calves for 2013 and 2014.
The live cattle exports comparison table shows figures running about 27,500 head ahead this year by mid-July.
